This one in particular can get unruly fast, as there’s always plenty you’ll want to do with regards to prepping no matter how much you’ve already got done and under your belt. If you’ve already started one of these, it’s been set up for a while, and happens to be a complete mess, take a look at the article I spoke about before, on re-organizing your prepper to-do list. It will help you sort your list out in an order that makes sense.

I stored Flour, Sugar (white & Brown) along with yeast, baking soda/powder and crisco. My plan is to use a Bread machine to make bread. I have a large generator to power essential items. I also have a small generator (very quite) to power things during night time hours or my camper that has an oven we could use in an emergency. The best thing you can do now is to sit down and go thru some various scenarios in your head with varying degrees of severity. Then, write it all down on paper in note/bullet statement format. When you’re stressed-out is not the time to formulate a plan.
18. 5 pounds of Coffee or 100 Tea Bags. There are those that will say that life without coffee is not life at all. Whole bean (assuming you have a hand grinder), ground or instant – take your choice. Or substitute tea. Green tea and many herbal teas are quite therapeutic so if you like tea, this may be a good way to go. To learn more about bulk coffee processing and storing for preppers, read this guide here.
Quick and easy foods help you through times when you are psychologically or physically unable to prepare your basic storage items. No cook foods such as freeze-dried are wonderful since they require little preparation. MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat), such as many preparedness outlets carry, canned goods, etc. are also very good. Psychological Foods are the goodies – Jello, pudding, candy, etc. – you should add to your storage.
Each of us has personal fears. It might be poor health. It might be a precarious job situation. There are a great number of individual calamities that can befall us, however, the fact that you have just been fired from your job, while I am concerned as I would be for anybody who has lost employment through no fault of his own, it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect my neighborhood. It doesn’t affect the distribution of food and utilities.
Hi, GNP. While, as a fellow Canuck, I applaud your noble sentiments I fear that in a true extended grid-down situation your idealism could be viewed as naivete and could get you and your neighbours killed or worse. And I am not criticizing or judging you but I don’t think most of us can imagine how bad it might get if a true SHTF situation arises. If you live a bit out of the bigger cities, once the looters are finished with them they will turn their eyes to the agricultural hinterland surrounding the cities. They will have no choice unless they all become cannibals. Once the food is completely gone from the major centres the mass of the population will spread like locusts across the land raping and pillaging and stealing whatever they can to survive. They will band together in gangs to survive and that will be very difficult to defend against. In any siege situation the advantage is always with the aggressor. They will wear you down bit by bit over time. I have to laugh at the notion of all the very rich secreting themselves in their hidden bunkers to wait out the end of the hostilities. What is there going to be for them to come back to? And if the attackers are determined enough their bunkers are going to be peeled back like so many sardine cans and the insides scooped out for good eatin’. LOL! If we’re talking bible stuff somewhere in there it says something like that no one can hide in caves or things like that if the worst comes to pass. I can see your idea working if you get together with ALL your neighbours before our worst nightmares come to pass and getting EVERYONE in your neighbourhood to start prepping now if they already haven’t done so. And you all have to be of like mind with a self-sufficient survivalist mindset. Everyone needs to have some farming or hunting skills and EVERYONE needs to be armed. AS long as they ALL understand it’s for the common good. Everyone has to bring their own particular skillset to the table and be prepared to work very hard to supplement the dwindling original food supply without the weekly virgin sacrifice. LOL! But that is also fraught with danger if there are laggards that refuse to prep and then they of course know who has supplies stashed away. There is no easy answer. Again, I’m not criticizing. You have to do what you think is right. I’m just trying to open your eyes as to what the reality of the situation may become. As bad as most of us think that things can get I don’t think most of us realize that whatever we can imagine the reality would be a 100 times worse. Under the right circumstances people can succumb to true evil and unfortunately too many people have watched shows like “The Walking Dead” giving them many “good” ideas as to what to do to survive. Unless you have a warehouse full of food and water stashed away you have no chance of even saving a small percentage of your neighbours. And once the easy food and water is gone there is a very good chance of them turning on you. As horrible as it sounds, once the food is gone, then starving people need to be treated like rabid dogs or they WILL pull YOU under and then all your effort is for naught. The only real solution I see is to try and move to a small community where the people are already used to being self-sufficient and settling there until some kind of order is restored. I live on a small crescent in what is still a fairly small town and my neighbours are the best. At the moment! LOL! It’s like a small community within a community. Maybe 200 houses. You do the math as to how many people. I have no hope in hell trying to save as many people as I can with the meager supplies I have managed to put away. As far as I can tell no one here is prepping or has fruit trees in their back yards or any thoughts for the future. And of course no one here knows what I’m doing. As far as they’re concerned I’m a poor, dumb, harmless old man. That suits me fine. I’ll leave you with one last story and it surprised the heck out of me. Came across a video on YouTube and there were three young men. Maybe mid 20’s. Not in any particular good or bad shape. Summertime. They wanted to see how far they could walk in 24 hours starting from the very bottom of Yonge street right by the lake. In 24 hours those sons of a bitches made it all the way up to Barrie. Didn’t think it could be done that quickly. The point being that once the people in the major centres like Toronto run out of food they will start to head north. And we’re talking millions of people. Once that happens the people north of the major centres will be in deep, deep shit. Hope we all have a lot of a ammo. I know that I’m going to get blasted for these comments but that can’t be helped. And I’m also sorry that I think so little of human nature but in a true disaster scenario events will play out quite differently as compared to the many sanitized versions that Hollywood loves to portray. As I say there is no easy answer or no easy solution and when the time comes many very difficult decisions will HAVE to made. OldNamVet has seen the reality of combat and what he proposes makes much more sense to me. Show whatever compassion you can to those refugees that come to your door but then very politely but firmly send them on their way and make sure that they understand this is a one time deal. When the time comes we will all be forced to become hard as diamonds while still retaining some semblance of our humanity. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Manufacturers make special kinds of heavy concrete that absorb more radiation, usually for nuclear waste storage facilities. But ultimately, you’ll need a very thick layer of concrete, not only for the walls but above and below you. It’s important to calculate how much radiation your bunker will need to absorb in the worst-case scenario you’re prepping for.
Anyway, in a general crisis only organized communities are likely to practice formal kinds of ‘execution’ or exiling. For North American urbs, formal reorganizing is initially unlikely; as with the failing Roman Empire, people will attempt to maintain prior forms until it’s clear that those require much more than that which is locally available (ie., records, ‘honest’ record-keeping, knowledge, skills, imported or difficult materials…).

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#4 Knowing the right time to G.O.D is an ongoing struggle for me. I know there is no pat answer to this one. Rather, it takes observation and that “sixth sense” or “gut feeling” we are all born with but don’t always rely on. In fact I’m infamous in my family for saying, “You’ve just got to trust me on this, I’ve got a gut feeling”. Have saved myself & family from a few unpleasant issues with my “gut feeling”. It’s that whole idea of not leaving too soon but yet not waiting too long either that I struggle with.

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Water is the source of life, and is an essential part of survival. In general, it is best to allot 1 gallon of water per person per day. This is including cooking, cleaning and drinking. Now, this is just an approximate amount since different locations and temperatures require different amounts of water. It would be a good idea to have enough water for each person in your family to last you at least 3 days. So, depending on your family size, it could be a lot. For a family of 4 people, it would be a minimum of 12 gallons of water for a 3-day supply.
There is a belief that President Trump will soon move to fire Special Prosecutor Mueller. This would result in a large protest within 24 hours of the firing. The protest would be semi-spontaneous and more than likely to happen on short notice. Based on this information, beginning tomorrow, April 19, 2018, many police departments' personnel are being required to bring a full uniform and any issued protective equipment (riot gear) with them to work until further notice.
The first action you should take, Pratt says, is notify your utility. Don't assume your neighbors have done it — besides, the more people that report an outage, the better they can pinpoint the problem. And after critical care community services (like hospitals and airports) have power restored, she explained, utilities look to areas that can bring “lots of customers back at one time.” So you can't over-report.
So if you feel like the world’s not getting any better, consider saving money to spend for this doomsday shelter project. A regular unit costs around $200,000 while an apartment for multiple families is around $2 million. Radius has been building underground bunkers for three decades now. These are regularly meant for military uses but due to terrorist attacks and nuclear threats, the company created family models too.
You should be doing your homework and putting in practice ahead of the fateful day, not counting on whipping out your manual in the middle of a crisis, but knowing how to best deal with any given situation is too good to pass up. In lieu of first-hand experience, a good set of instructions can help carry the day. I really like the Pocket Ref guides for general knowledge and skills, as they are tiny and positively packed with useful info.
Anyway, another thought runnin’ round my brain as of late is a mistake Gaye’s friend did, “Yes, you can use oxygenators and all that stuff. I tried that and I ended up throwing out all the food. It was rancid. I processed $1,200.00 of food at a local church facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. I threw it out one year later. It was a volunteer church group that did not know how many oxygenators to put in each #10 can.” – //foodstoragemoms.com/2015/11/dehydrating-food-for-long-term/
63. Snake bit kit – depending on where you live, not a necessity. But if your out about in the country especially in the southern half of the US, having a snake bit kit is wise. Here is a list of venomous snakes by state. These kits usually ome with a powerful suction extractor that can double for any poisonous bite or sting. Here is a decent snake kit.
The Emergency Essentials Premier bucket is the best short term emergency food product for most people. The $380 three-bucket option covers two people for 15-18 days at a very healthy 2,700-2,275 calories per day. One person can cover two weeks for only a single $130 bucket if you stretch the 27,330 total calories an extra day or two at 1,900 calories per day.
In a Saturday, May 13, 2017 photo, Kenneth Young, left, and Mark Bowman walk into on the bunkers Vivos is trying to lease in Igloo, S.D. at xFest, a three-day gathering for people who want to convert the site's bunkers, which formerly housed bombs, into shelters for protection against tyranny, anarchy, nuclear war, the end times or any other calamity that might befall civilization. The project is the brainchild of Robert Vicino, a California entrepreneur who has an agreement with a local ranching company to offer 575 of the site's estimated 830 bunkers for lease. (Chris Huber/Rapid City Journal via AP) Chris Huber / Rapid City Journal
It's reported that US and British â€œadvisersâ€ and â€œinstructorsâ€ to the Syrian opposition forces are trapped in Idlib. There are frantic attempts by the USA and Britain to ask Turkey or Russia to help evacuate these troops. But Britain has refused to co-operate with the Russians. The fall of Idlib would be the end of the last rebel held province and would open up the main highway through Syria from Jordan to Turkey. Syrian Government troops are massing for an attack, Russian ships have gathered off the coast at Tartous and the final phase of the Syrian war looks imminent. There are 200 British and US instructors, doubtless with important weaponry and intelligence, are trapped and the UK wants the Turks to evacuate them to the Incirlik airbase In Turkey. This was apparently refused.
There is one important aspect of planning your freeze dried food storage: try some sample meals before you invest in a six month or one year supply of one particular brand. I have my own preferences that you are welcome to use as a guideline (check out Mountain House or Legacy Foods) but there are others. Also keep in mind that some kits are chock full of sugary drinks and other fillers. Yes, you will need some beverages but they should not comprise 40% of your daily caloric intake.
But if you stay, take note of the time. When the outage strikes, the clock is ticking on the food in your refrigerator and freezer. The USDA says food in a fridge will stay safely cold for four hours if the door isn't opened and a full freezer will maintain temperature for about 48 hours (if it's half full, that's 24 hours) as long as you keep the door closed. And don't rely on just looking — and certainly not on tasting — to see if the food's safe, they say. Instead, keep appliance thermometers in the fridge and freezer. You want to see 40 F or below in the fridge and 0°F or lower in the freezer. When in doubt, take individual foods' temperature with a food thermometer.
Canned meat: Get about 20 cans of assorted meats. Without refrigeration it will be hard to keep meat from spoiling, and that’s if you can get it in the first place. There are quite a few options, SPAM, Ham, Beef, Chicken, Tuna and sardines, but remember buy what you eat now. Also make sure you have a manual can opener, your electric can opener might not work.

Monitor what your family eats for a week and use that as a guideline for getting started. The advantage of doing this is you will learn what your family likes so that you can shop accordingly. You would be surprised at how many people can’t remember what they ate yesterday let alone a week ago. Try to write everything down so that you don’t have to rely upon your memory.

Bogwalker lives here with her partner and 20-month-old daughter, Hazel. Inside an open-air living room and kitchen on the property, the baby snuggles up against her leg as she imparts instructions to a crowd of students. They’re here for the fourth and final day of Basic Women’s Carpentry, one of a number of courses Bogwalker and her majority-female staff offer specifically for women, with the aim of equipping them with the tools they need to become more self-reliant. “It’s not primitive skills by any means,” Bogwalker says of the class. “It’s using power tools, table saws, chop saws, impact drivers.”
When Kafrina hit a few years ago, it was unbelievable to see the number of people who decided to ride out the storm instead of evacuating. As the “reliality” of the destruction of Katrina was sinking in on TV, what was so horrifying was watching all these “hundreds” of people without water! And nowhere to get it! They were completely cut off from civilization! As the next couple of days passed on, and still, no relief in sight, I watched in horror the actions do these people desperate for water! I wanted so badly to reach through my TV and hand them a bottle of water, but could not do that! I never felt so helpless in my entire life. And they were killing each over in an effort to get to water! With all the technology, with all the electricity, with all of our knowledge, we could not get a bottle of water to these people, and some died on the side of the road in desperation to get to water! I have never forgot how quick a people can destroy theirselves over they lack of water, and also for their lack of taking other precautions to keep themselves alive!
But a new year is really just another twelve-month slice of the future, and it contains dangers as well as opportunities. Obviously we hope none of the bad things the future can hold will come to pass, but we have to be realistic – the world isn’t always a friendly place. Good things will happen in 2018, but bad things can and will happen too. Some of those bad things have the potential to be truly disastrous, and we need to be prepared to face them if they happen.
Pat I felt the same way you did about becoming a prepper. One day something inside of me said ok look, it’s time to start making a list and to get going on this endeavor. I started with the basics. I have been prepping for about a year + and have collected quite a lot of supplies. I educated myself in ways to store food. I am a You Tube watching fool, always looking at videos on how to do this or that. I’d like to know how to meet others who are prepping as well. I don’t really know… Read more »
They have a huge selection of dehydrated and freeze-dried foods from top brands such as Saratoga Farms, Mountain House, EasyPrep, OvaEasy, Yoders, Datrex, Mainstay, WonderMill, and more. They also have a complete selection of MRE Military Meals. These include self-heating kits with meals like spaghetti, sweet and sour chicken, and garden vegetables in tomato sauce.

Now, as for actual emergency warnings, I've got US Alerts, Disaster Alerts by Pacific Disaster, ubAlert, and HealthMap. Each app does display basically the same data, but hey each have different capacities and focuses, like HealthMap focuses on medical emergencies and outbreaks and has been the only app, to my knowledge, that links with CDC and WHO warnings and advisories.

According to the inveterate salesman Vicino, plenty of people will, and many already have. He declined to disclose how many leases he has sold, and the Journal has no way to verify his claims, but he said the first phase of the project is nearly sold out. That first phase consists of the "F'' block of bunkers, one of seven lettered blocks of bunkers being offered for lease.
#4 Knowing the right time to G.O.D is an ongoing struggle for me. I know there is no pat answer to this one. Rather, it takes observation and that “sixth sense” or “gut feeling” we are all born with but don’t always rely on. In fact I’m infamous in my family for saying, “You’ve just got to trust me on this, I’ve got a gut feeling”. Have saved myself & family from a few unpleasant issues with my “gut feeling”. It’s that whole idea of not leaving too soon but yet not waiting too long either that I struggle with.

You can figure 25-30 years storage life for hard red wheat, stored at 60 degrees in a 55 gallon drum, using 1 pound of dry ice to drive out the oxygen (wait 24hrs for the dry ice to “melt” before sealing the drum). 400 pounds of wheat per drum equals 400 man-days of calories, and costs you about $100. Fill 3-4 barrels. It’s Cheap insurance. Add a barrel of Winter Rye for variety. Add a barrel of oats. Then a couple barrels of WHITE rice, and 2-3 barrels of pinto beans. (You need the beans to balance what’s missing from the grains. The beans may be harder to rehydrate after 10-12 years without a pressure cooker, but then you just grind up the dried beans, and bake them in your bread.) For around $1000, you can be prepared to feed your family for close to a decade, if you also garden, keep chickens, and have fruit trees and bushes. Honey is way too expensive to store on a dollar/calorie basis, but consider bee keeping. A drum takes up LESS than 2’X2’. And they stack nicely, at 33” tall. In a 2’X10′ strip along a basement wall, you can have 10 barrels with 4000 pounds of food. Hang a peg board in front of it, and you’ve got very useful space. If you can’t spare that much space in your basement, to protect the lives of your family, think Venezuela .

Just be aware, if you have stored mixes like bisquick or cake mixes which have baking powder in them. Baking powder has a shelf life, after that shelf life, the bp isn’t stable so your product may not rise and/or may taste funny. Depending on what form of dry milk (powder as opposed to instant milk) is used, that can also make your premixes go bad.

I’ve gotten a lot of flour sugar, stuff for scratch cooking, something like bullion cubes, evaporated milk, yeast, can veggies you can throw together all kinds of soups. I ordered powdered eggs and butter, biscuits and gravy, homemade beans, I have done some canning, of meats and made some spatgetti sauce for canning. Think camping, I got a dutch oven-good for cakes and breads.
I’ve just explained why EMP wouldn’t be as destructive as a full-scale nuclear war, but it would still be devastating – and it’s a lot more likely than a Cold War-style missile exchange. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, it’s a lot more survivable for the aggressor; our government might hesitate to launch a retaliatory strike on a country, killing millions of its people, because its leaders exploded a nuclear warhead in space. Secondly there are more countries who are capable of doing it right now or could be there in a matter of months.
Expert advice isn’t always as expert as we’d like to believe. There have been many times when I tried to follow how-to advice, only to get frustrated that I can’t seem to do what they did, or I sometimes figure out a more efficient method on my own anyway. This is especially true for the prepper lifestyle. When the internet started exploding with prepper advice a few years ago, most of the bloggers and self-proclaimed experts were learning as they go along with their readers.
Has anyone considered that with out fuel or just cooking over a fire, that cooking them things like dried beans (they take a couple of hours to cook on a stove), or rice ( 20 minutes). Unless you do a lot of cooking with un even fire, you will either burn the food or under cook it. Wouldn’t processed foods or dehydrated foods be better. Less cooking . When listing what to stock up on, don’t list dried beans and rice as a staple or you will have a lot of people having to eat raw rice and beans. Thanks for listening. Ioma
From the remote road, you first come across a landscape of hundreds of earth-covered domes in perfect rows with their concrete exteriors providing a stark contrast to the lush surroundings. This was Fort Igloo, where for over 24 years the US Army’s Black Hills Ordnance Depot created jobs for thousands of workers and their families. This was a community that many former residents still have fond memories.
Good point. But if you do have your drives and at least one very simple computer stashed away in an emp-proof container it will once again become useful when they eventually get the lights turned on again. And make no mistake about it. We will rebuild our civilization. Up to that point, yes, I entirely agree with you that hard copy is easier to deal with.
Has anyone considered that with out fuel or just cooking over a fire, that cooking them things like dried beans (they take a couple of hours to cook on a stove), or rice ( 20 minutes). Unless you do a lot of cooking with un even fire, you will either burn the food or under cook it. Wouldn’t processed foods or dehydrated foods be better. Less cooking . When listing what to stock up on, don’t list dried beans and rice as a staple or you will have a lot of people having to eat raw rice and beans. Thanks for listening. Ioma
Enjoy these healthy meals tonight or in 30 years with Numanna which has many different dietary restriction options like organic, gluten-free, non-GMO and more. Their best seller, the family mega pack will give you 840 servings of wholesome food and includes delicious recipes to make meals such as habanero chili, cheddar broccoli soup, pancakes and much, much more. This food can be used alone or along with other foods.

Yes, that is true. Many years ago I was all into reading tarot cards, reading palms and crap like that. I relied mostly on my wit & street smarts, mainly because I have always been a loner most of my adult life, just me & the animals. About 10 or so years ago, I started praying, sporadically at first, then everyday, just because I could see that I was no longer in control of things, even though I worked like mad to ‘fix’ my environment/job/health life, etc…. I was trying to ‘will’ things to happen, just by sheer determination, but I just couldn’t do it alone anymore….. It is still hard, some days. You try to do the right thing, speak “up” speak “out”, protect the weak, old, infirm, nurture the environment and all it’s beautiful creatures, & and at the same time keep your ego in check….

If an alternate location is not practical, consider storing items at various locations around your home. Not everything needs to be on shelves in the basement. Spread things out so that if the basement gets flooded, you still have dry items in the upstairs bedroom. Use your imagination and don’t forget to do the very best you can to package everything so it is resistant to moisture and pests.

Only a small percentage of those with high blood pressure are salt sensitive and need to limit their intake. For those without high blood pressure or without that sensitivity, salt is not an issue. This is one of those media maintained myths, such as “eating eggs causes clogged arteries” and “low calorie low protein high sugar diet is great for you”.

In 2014 there was a major outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in West Africa. This was far larger than all earlier outbreaks combined, because people are getting more mobile and the disease reached larger towns and cities. Horrifyingly, it also managed to reach out across the Atlantic and infect four people in the USA. We were lucky; all the cases were caught before they could spread further. We might not be lucky next time – and the virus is still out there in Africa. All it takes is one sick person to get on a plane and we could be facing a major epidemic.

The reason the vacuum sealing system’s up on this list is because I feel food has a much longer “shelf life” so to speak when its vacuum sealed before being thrown in the freezer. Used to have a lot of power outages when we lived in Toronto, and each time our food would thaw out a little it’d taste worse and worse – except for the one vacuum sealed slab of meat we got from a neighbour which I think withstood 2-3 power outages (one which lasted 4-5 days) and tasted as though it was vacuum packed the day before. I’ve also heard of people vacuum packing rice into smaller one-serving portions, and have always thought that a great idea for cases you might want to throw a bunch into a pack and go, or just generally extend the shelf life of your food/prevent rats and mice from getting into things. Necessary? No. Definitely still something I want, though.
Forums and Facebook groups are littered with the same fundamental questions asked over and over again, but they often get incomplete, conflicting, or even dangerous answers. Then we’d read a blog where they did some quick googling and cranked out a post just to get some traffic. Or we’d have to dig through crazy propaganda and extreme political opinions in the hopes of finding a right answer. It drove us mad — we just wanted the facts and straightforward answers!
I watched a man get promoted to black belt in my grandson’s dojo. He was pitiful. My son and I both agreed thet we hoped he never stood up when someone said, “Shut up.” because he was going to get seriously hurt. It was a mercy promotion done to keep him coming back. He had been going for two years but he still had so many bad faults that he should have still had his beginner’s white belt.
Disturbing news from the Southern Carribean. The World Bank just “ruled” against Venezuela in favor of oil giant ConocoPhillips, saying they could “seize” their government owned oil assets. All this while Russian nuclear bombers and naval vessels have been sighted in the area. Venezuela, already on the verge of collapse, may be the next flash point in the world. Lawsuit Article Link
14. Canned Cheese – A little company in Australia, called Bega, makes a wonderful canned cheese that can for a LONG time! The manufacturer says that the shelf life is only 2 years, but canned goods if handled properly can last much longer than that. Here is one prepper who opened them after 13 years, and the cheese still tasted great! Grab some Bega for your next camping trip, and see how you like it, may make a nice addition to your long term food storage plan!

The MREs from Meal Kit Supply tasted better than the food I ate many years ago so I am happy to recommend them to anyone looking for an MRE supplier. You can get a box of 12 MRE’s yourself from Meal Kit Supply and try them out or just place them aside for an emergency. MRE’s are another good food option that will store for a long time and could save your life.

In both his book Rawles on Retreats and Relocation and in his survivalist novel, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, Rawles describes in great detail retreat groups "upgrading" brick or other masonry houses with steel reinforced window shutters and doors, excavating anti-vehicular ditches, installing warded gate locks, constructing concertina wire obstacles and fougasses, and setting up listening post/observation posts (LP/OPs.) Rawles is a proponent of including a mantrap foyer at survival retreats, an architectural element that he calls a "crushroom".[8]
Great article. Very informative and insightful. I also think learning how to store the right food most especially for leaner times is very important. For me canning is the best way to store food. But make sure that you can your food the right way. It is also a proven fact that canning as a way of storing and preserving different kinds of foods has been done since the 1800’s.
“Title-1 schools are on the free-breakfast and free-lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I’m not talking about a glass of milk and a roll. But a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make the Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (Our tax dollars at work!)
If you’re anything like me, you can easily get sucked into thinking about doing specific things that really won’t help you out all that much. These kinds of tasks could be redundant and repetitive, or even appealing and quite fun, but in actual reality, happen to be way too time consuming for the amount of pay off you’d get from doing them. Don’t let yourself get sucked back in to spending time on these kinds of task if you find they’re absorbing way too much of your time! Stick them on a not to do list to remind yourself to keep your time for things that have a higher pay off!
If the men on the blog Doomsday Preppers seem inordinately preoccupied with some distant future in which everything falls apart, he explains, it’s because that imagined scenario represents a moment when they get to feel like they’re actually useful. “I’ve got a chainsaw and a pickup truck and a little cabin in the woods and I can get my assault weapon out and I can be important,” he explains of the mindset. “I’m not really useful until something goes wrong.”
A lot of electric mountain bikes have hit the market lately. I’ve listed one instead of a regular mountain bike because they can help you travel substantially faster than you would be able to without the extra boost. Of course it’s important to get a bike that will continue to work well even after you run out of electricity, in case you only want to use the boost initially, but not waste your precious post-SHTF electricity on bike speed later, which is why the ability to remove the battery off an electric bike completely is very helpful. No one needs to carry dead weight.
74. Essential oils – Having a good stock of essential oils will be very useful if the system goes down and its hard to find quality medicine. Essential oils are inexpensive and needs no prescription to buy them and can be used for antiseptics, relieve headaches, promote sleep, reduce anxiety, treat wounds, etc … Here is an article on the 25 uses of lavender which is considered the jack of all oils! You will want to have in stock a starter kit of essential oils!
I never saw the other one, but it was described to me a few years ago by the son of the builders after the house was sold and security no longer an issue. He said his father was concerned about nuclear war, and that he was also worried that the house would burn down as a result of the blast. His solution was to have an underground blast shelter built outside the house, with a corridor entrance from the basement and another exit in case the house burned/collapsed. Yes, this was a very high budget bunker.
Here’s an idea that is very useful. I found at the dollar store some space bags. I used one per person and filled it with winter gear, a multi tool, matches/lighter, a small solar light, a bit of emergency food, an emergency blanket, some basic first aid supplies, etc., then removed the air. If you pack it right, you will be able to fold it over and (I used a bungee cord) place over a strap for easy carry. Now you have an instant (and weather proof) instant kit. I also did this with a pillow (small personal one), blanket, sheet, towel, etc. Not only are they portable and protected, they store in less space.
For ideas, take a look at 12 Months of Prepping: One Month at a Time. Here you will find links to articles that take you though the process of gathering what you need in terms of supplies, gear, tasks, and skills to set you on a positive path of preparedness. It may not seem like a lot, but at the end of the year you will will be better prepared than 95% of your neighbors.
If I can cite the number one reason people become overwhelmed when even thinking about putting aside an emergency food supply, it is the perceived sense of urgency that it all needs to be done right now. And this, for many, results in complacency and inaction. Don’t fall into this trap. Begin with a three day supply and gradually build that up to a week. After that, add to your emergency food supply week by week until pretty soon, you have three months of food stored away for you and your family.
17. Spices and Condiments. Adding some spices and condiments to your food storage pantry will allow you to vary the taste of your storage foods, thus mitigating some of the boredom that is likely to occur over time. The exact mix of spices and condiments is up to you but some suggestions include garlic, chili, Tabasco (hot sauce), salsa, oregano, thyme and black pepper. For a full list of the best prepper herbs and spices, check out the BDS guide here.
Some of us may prep a little and others may prep a lot. Along the way, we may make some of the mistakes I have listed above, and most assuredly there will be others. At the end of the day, however, we all want to live a life filled with growth, opportunity and the ability to take care of oneself physically, mentally and spiritually. To me, that is what prepping is all about, mistakes and all.

Great article. Very informative and insightful. I also think learning how to store the right food most especially for leaner times is very important. For me canning is the best way to store food. But make sure that you can your food the right way. It is also a proven fact that canning as a way of storing and preserving different kinds of foods has been done since the 1800’s.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about the female prepper lifestyle is that it suggests a counterintuitive movement through time: a return to a slower, more elemental way of life, one that eschews the conveniences of modern consumer society in favor of the empowerment that comes from doing things yourself. Some of the women I spoke to said being a prepper helped them carry on the same old-fashioned life skills — like gardening, canning, and smart budgeting — that helped their mothers and grandmothers during the Great Depression. Others harkened back to the homesteaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose pioneering settlement and cultivation of the Great Plains form the backbone of the American myth of self-reliance.

*We wanted to test the Augason Farms 30-day bucket, but due to the 2017 natural disasters driving up demand for emergency food, we couldn’t get that exact one in time for this article. Instead, Augason sent us a 1- and 2-week bucket, which together have the same food as the 30-day. We used the nutritional data from the 30-day bucket in our analysis.